without directing them-we know that there, When we asked Mr. Braid wood the question, is an unvarying percentage of broken heads he answered, "Oh! we always look out for and limbs received into the hospitals--and fires when there is a high tide. They arise here we see that a regular number of houses from the heating of lime upon the addition take fire, year by year, from the leaping out of water." Thus rain, we see, has caused of a spark, or the dropping of a smouldering four conflagrations, and simple overheating pipe of tobacco. It may indeed be a long forty-four. The lime does no harm as long time before another conflagration will arise as it is merely in contact with wood, but if from "a monkey upsetting a clotheshorse," iron happens to be in juxtaposition with the but we have no doubt such an accident will two, it speedily becomes red-hot, and barges recur in its appointed cycle. on the river have been sunk, by reason of their bolts and iron knees burning holes in their bottoms. Of the singular entry, "rat gnawing a gaspipe," the firemen state that it is common for rats to gnaw leaden service pipes, for the purpose, it is supposed, of getting at the water, and in this instance the gray rodent labored under a mistake, and let out the raw material of the opposite element. Intoxication is a fruitful cause of fires, especially in public houses and inns. Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been attended with danger. There is another kind of light, however, which the insurance offices look upon with terror, espeeially those who make it their business to insure farm property. The assistant secretary of one of the largest fire-offices, speaking broadly, informed us that the introduction of the lucifer match caused them an annual loss of ten thousand pounds! In the foregoing Lucifers going off probably from heat Jackdaw playing with lucifers 80 45 1 1 127 One hundred and twenty-seven known fires thus arise from this single cause; and no doubt many of the twenty-five fires ascribed to the agency of cats and dogs were owing to their having thrown down boxes of matches at night which they frequently do, and which is almost certain to produce combustion. The item "rat gnawing lucifer" reminds us to give a warning against leaving about wax lucifers where there are either rats or mice, for these vermin constantly run away with them to their holes behind the inflammable canvas, and eat the wax until they reach the phosphorus, which is ignited by the friction of their teeth. Many fires are believed to have been produced by this singular circumstance. How much, again, must lucifers have contributed to swell the large class of conflagrations whose causes are unknown! Another cause of fire, which is of recent date, is the use of naphtha in lamps--a most ignitable fluid when mixed in certain proportions with common air. "A delightful novel" figures as a proximate, if not an immediate, cause of twenty-two fires. This might be expected, but what can be the meaning of a fire caused by a high tide? It is commonly imagined that the introduction of hot water, hot air, and steam pipes, as a means of heating buildings, cuts off one avenue of danger from fire. This is an error. Iron pipes, often heated up to 400°, are placed in close contact with floors and skirting-boards, supported by slight diag onal props of wood, which a much lower degree of heat will suffice to ignite. The circular rim supporting a still at the Apothecaries' Hall, which was used in the preparation of some medicament that required a temperature of 300°, was found not long ago to have charred a circle at least a quarter of an inch deep in the wood beneath it, in less than six months. Mr. Braidwood, in his evidence before a Committee of the House of Lords in 1846, stated that it was his belief 'that by long exposure to heat, not much exceeding that of boiling water, or 212°, timber is brought into such a condition that it will fire without the application of a light. The time during which this process of desiccation goes on, until it ends in spontaneous combustion, is, he thinks, from eight to ten years-so that a fire might be hatching in a man's premises during the whole of his lease without making any sign! Under the heads "Incendiarism," "Doubtful," and "Unknown," are included all the cases of wilful firing. The return Incendiarism is never made unless there has been a conviction, which rarely takes place, as the offices are only anxious to protect themselves against fraud, and do not like the trouble or bad odor of being prosecutors on public grounds. If the evidence of wilful firing, however, is conclusive, the insured, when he applies for his money, is significantly informed that of late years it has been very much inby the secretary, that unless he leaves the creased by the pernicious competition for office, he will hang him. Though arson is no business among the younger offices, which longer punished by death, the hint is usually leads them to deal too leniently with their taken. Now and then such flagrant offenders customers; or, in other words, to pay the are met with, that the office can not avoid pur- money, and ask no questions. It is calculated suing them with the utmost rigor of the law. that one fire in seven which occur among the Such, in 1851, was the case of a "respecta- small class of shopkeepers in London is an ble" solicitor, living in Lime Street, Watling incendiary fire. Mr. Braidwood, whose exStreet, who had insured his house and furni-perience is larger than that of any other perture for a sum much larger than they were son, tells us that the greatest ingenuity is worth. The means he adopted for the com- sometimes exercised to deceive the officers of mission of his crime without discovery were the insurance company as to the value of apparently sure; but it was the very pains he the insured stock. In one instance, when took to accomplish his end which led to his the Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing detection. He had specially made to order the fire, he discovered a string stretched a deep tray of iron, in the centre of which across one of the rooms in the basement of was placed a socket; the tray he filled with the house, on which ringlets of shavings naphtha, and in the socket he put a candle, dipped in turpentine were tied at regular inthe light of which was shaded by a funnel. tervals. On extending his investigations he The candle was one of the kind which he used ascertained that a vast pile of what he for his gig-lamp, for he kept a gig, and was thought were pounds of moist sugar, concalculated to last a stated time before it sisted of parcels of brown paper, and that reached the naphtha. He furtively deposited the loaves of white sugar were made of plasthe whole machine in the cellar, within eight ter of Paris. Ten to one but the "artful inches of the wooden floor, in a place con- dodge" which some scoundrel flatters himself structed to conceal it. The attorney went is peculiarly. his own, has been put in pracout, and on coming back again found, as he tice by hundreds of others before him. For expected, that his house was on fire. Unfor- this reason, fires that are wilful generally betunately, however, for him-if it is ever a tray themselves to the practiced eye of the misfortune to a scoundrel to be detected-it Brigade. When an event of the kind is was put out at a very early stage; and the 'going to happen" at home, a common cirfiremen, whilst in the act of extinguishing it, cumstance is to find that the fond parent has discovered this infernal machine. The order treated the whole of his family to the theato make it was traced to the delinquent; a tre. female servant, irritated at the idea of his There is another class of incendiary fires having left her in the house to be burned to which arise from a species of monomania in death, gave evidence against him; he was boys and girls. Not many years ago, the tried and convicted, and is now expiating his men of the Brigade were occupied for hours crime at Norfolk Island. Plans for rebuild-in putting out no less than half a dozen fires ing this villain's house, and estimates of the expense, were found afterwards among his papers. which broke out one after another in a house in West Smithfield; and it was at last discovered that they were occasioned by a youth The class "Doubtful" includes all those who went about with lucifers and slily ignicases in which the offices have no moral ted every thing that would burn. He was doubt that the fire has been wilful, but are caught in the act of firing a curtain in not in possession of legal evidence sufficient the very room in which a fireman was occuto substantiate a charge against the offender. pied in putting out a blaze. A still more exIn most of these instances, however, the in-traordinary case took place in the year 1848, sured has his reasons for taking a much at Torluck House, in the Isle of Mull. On smaller sum than he originally demanded. Sunday, the 11th of November, the curtains Lastly, we have the "Unknown," to which of a bed were ignited, as was supposed, by 1323 cases are put down, one of the largest lightning; a window-blind followed; and imnumbers in the entire list, though decreasing mediately afterwards the curtains of five rooms year by year. Even of these a certain per- broke out one after another into a flame; even centage are supposed to be wilful. There is the towels hanging up in the kitchen were no denying that the crime of arson owes its burnt. The next day a bed took fire, and it arigin entirely to the introduction of fire in- being thought advisable to carry the bed-linen surance; and there can be as little doubt into the coach-house for safety, it caught fire three or four times during the process of removal. In a few days the phenomenon was renewed. The furniture, books, and every thing else of an inflammable nature, were, with much labor, taken from the mansion, and again some body-linen burst into a flame on the way. Even after these precautions had been taken, and persons had been set to watch in every part of the house, the mysterious fires continued to haunt it until the 22d of February, 1849. It was suspected from the first that they were the act of an incendiary, and upon a rigid examination of the household before the Fiscal-General and the Sheriff the mischief was traced to the daughter of the housekeeper, a young girl who was on a visit to her mother. She had effected her purpose, which was perfectly motiveless, by concealing combustibles in different parts of the house. The most ludicrous conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips's workshop, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable contre-temps to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. In juxtaposition with this case we are tempted to put another, in which the attempt at extinction was followed by exactly the opposite effects. A tradesman was about to light his gas, when, finding the cock stiff, he took a candle to see what was the matter; whilst attempting to turn it the screw came out, and with it a jet of gas, which was instantly fired by the candle. The blaze igniting the shop, a passer-by seized a wooden pail and threw its contents upon the flames, which flared up immediately with tenfold power. It is scarcely necessary to state that the water was whiskey, and that the country was Old Ireland. Spontaneous combustion is at present very little understood, though chemists have of late turned their attention to the subject. It forms, however, no inconsiderable item in the list of causes of fires. There can be no question that many of those that occur at railway-stations, and buildings, are due to the fermentation which arises among oiled rags. Over-heating of waste, which includes shoddy, sawdust, cotton, &c., is a fearful source of conflagrations. The cause of most fires which have arisen from spontaneous combustion is lost in the consequence. Cases now and then occur where the firemen have been able to detect it, as for instance at Hibernia Wharf in 1846, one of Alderman Humphreys' warehouses. It happened that a porter had swept the sawdust from the floor into a heap, upon which a broken flask of oliveoil that was placed above, dripped its contents. To these elements of combustion the sun added its power, and sixteen hours afterwards the fire broke out. Happily it was instantly extinguished; and the agents that produced it were caught, red-handed as it were, in the act. The chances are that such a particular combination of circumstances might not occur again in a thousand years. The sawdust will not be swept again into such a position under the oil, or the bottle will not break over the sawdust, or the sun will not shine in on them to complete the fatal sum. It is an important fact, however, to know that oiled sawdust, warmed by the sun, will fire in sixteen hours, as it accounts for a number of conflagrations in saw-mills, which never could be traced to any probable cause. By means of direct experiment we are also learning something on the question of explosions. It used to be assumed that gunpowder was answerable for all such terrible effects in warehouses where no gas or steam was employed; and as policies are vitiated by the fact of its presence, unless declared, many squabbles have ensued between insurers and insured upon this head alone. At the late great fire at Gateshead, a report having spread that the awful explosion which did so much damage arose from the illicit stowage of seven tons of gunpowder in the Messrs. Sisson's warehouse, the interested insurance companies offered a reward of 1007. to elicit information. The experiments instituted, however, by Mr. Pattinson, in the presence of Captain Du Cane, of the Royal Engineers, and the coroner's jury impanelled to inquire into the matter, showed that the water from the fire-engine falling upon the mineral and chemical substances in store was sufficient to account for the result. The following were the experiments tried at Mr. Pattinson's works at Felling, about three miles from Gateshead. "Mr. Pattinson first caused a metal pot to be inserted in the ground until its top was level with the surface; and having put into it 9 lbs. of nitrate of soda and 6 lbs. of sulphur, he ignited the mass; and then, heating it to the highest possible degree of which it was susceptible, he poured into it about a quart of water. The effect was an immediate explosion (accompanied by a loud clap), ས།། 1855.] which would have been exceedingly perilous to tive." We may here mention as a curious result of the Gateshead fire that several tons of lead, whilst flowing in a molten state, came in contact with a quantity of volatilized sulphur. Thus the lead became re-converted into lead-ore, or a sulphuret of lead, which, as it required to be re-smelted, was thereby debased in value from some twenty-two to fifteen shillings a ton. The great fire, again, which occurred in Liverpool in October last, was occasioned by the explosion of spirits of turpentine, which blew out, one after another, seven of the walls of the vaults underneath the warehouse, and in some cases destroyed the vaulting itself, and exposed to the flames the stores of cotton above. Surely some law is called for to prevent the juxtaposition of such inflammable materials. The turpentine is said to have been fired by a workman who snuffed the candle with his fingers, and accidentally threw the snuff down the bung-hole of one of the barrels of turpentine. The warehouses burnt were built upon Mr. Fairbairn's new fireproof plan, which the Liverpool people introduced, some years ago, at a great expense to the town. Water alone brought into sudden contact with red-hot iron is capable of giving rise to a gas of the most destructive nature-witness the extraordinary explosions that are con- Private Houses Oil and Color men Chandlers Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths Coffee-shops and Chophouses Wine and Spirit Merchants Ships Printers and Engravers Builders Houses unoccupied Marine store Dealers Warehouses Chemists. Coachmakers 62 50 49 46 If we look at the mere number of fires, irrespective of the size of the industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at the head of the list, and it is well known that they [May, 63 tion, Are the contents of houses forming the group of that nature that, in case of their taking fire, they are likely to be totally destroyed, seriously, or only slightly damaged? For instance, lodging-houses are very liable to fire; but they are very seldom burnt down or much injured. Out of 81 that suffered in 1853 not one was totally destroyed; only four were extensively affected; the very large majority, 77, were slightly scathed from the burning of window and bed curtains, &c. Among the trades which are too hazardous to be insured at any price arewe quote from the Tariff of the "County Fire-office,"--floor-cloth manufacturers, gunpowder dealers, hatters' "stock in the stove," lamp-black makers, lucifer-match makers, varnish-makers, and wadding-manufacturers; whilst the following are considered highly hazardous,-bone-crushers, coffee-roasters, composition-ornament makers, curriers, dyers, feather-stovers, flambeau-makers, hecklinghouses, hemp and flax dressers, ivory-black 30-00 makers, japanners and japan-makers, labora16:51 tory-chemists, patent japan-leather manufac7.74 turers, lint-mills, rough-fat melters, musical3.88 instrument makers, oil and color men, leather-dressers, oiled silk and linen makers, oil of vitriol manufacturers, pitch-makers, 2.12 rag-dealers, resin-dealers, saw-mills, seed1.56 crushers, ship-biscuit bakers, soap-makers, 1-31 spermaceti and wax refiners, sugar-refiners, tar dealers and boilers, thatched houses in towns, and turpentine-makers. are the safest from fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries, who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires in each industrial group with the number of houses devoted to it, as far as he could find any data in the Post-office Directory, gives the following average annual percentage of conflagrations, calculated on a period of fifteen years: 2.27 Drapers 2.67 . Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths 2.42 1.20 Cabinet Makers . 1.12 Licensed Victuallers Bakers Wine Merchants 1.18 .86 .75 It is a notable fact that the city of London, which is perhaps the most densely inhabited 61 spot the world has ever seen, has long been 34 exempt from conflagrations involving a considerable number of houses. "The devouring element," it is true, has made many meals from time to time of huge warehouses and public buildings; but since the great fire of 1666 it has ceased to gorge upon whole quarters of the town. We have never had, since that memorable occasion, to record the destruction of a thousand houses at a time, a matter of frequent occurrence in the United States and Canada-indeed in all parts of Continental Europe. The fires which have proved fatal to large plots of buildings in the metropolis, have in every instance taken place without the sound of Bow bells. A comparison between the number of fires which occurred between the years 1838 and 1843, in 20,000 houses situated on either side of the Thames, shows at once the superior safety of its northern bank, the annual average of fires on the latter being only 20 against 36 on the southern side. For It will be seen that this estimate in a great measure inverts the order of "dangerous," as we have ranged them in the previous table, making those which from their aggregate number seemed to be the most hazardous trades appear the least so, and vice versa. Thus lucifer-match makers have a bad preeminence; indeed, they are supposed to be subject to a conflagration every third year, while the terrible victuallers, carpenters, mercers, and bakers, at the top of the column, shrink to the bottom of the list. These conclusions nevertheless are only an approximation to the truth, since it is impossible to procure a correct return of the houses occupied by different trades. Even if a certain class of tenements is particularly liable to fire, it does not follow that it will be held to be very hazardous to the insurers. Such considerations are influenced by another ques |